In third grade I declared to anyone who asked or would listen, that I was going to be a Sister.

I was touched very deeply by the peace, joy, and the ability to find enjoyment in the simple things in life. This is what I experienced and saw lived out in the lives of Sisters in my home parish, Our Lady of the Atonement, Kinston, N.C.

A year after graduating from high school, I joined the Adorers of the Blood of Christ in Columbia, Pennsylvania. I found out soon enough that religious living in community was a perfect fit for me.

The Adorers of the Blood of Christ that I met at St. Teresa Academy in East St. Louis were on a mission to educate women—confident, competent, Catholic women. A sign in freshman homeroom said, “The true Teresan dares to be different.” This was not a girl’s finishing school; it was more like a launching pad!

That is probably why I joined the sisterhood when the desire that my life ‘make a difference’ in a bigger world stirred in me.

Our foundress, Maria DeMattias, told us our lives, like the Blood of Christ, are to be signs of God’s love poured out in ALL-embracing and empowering love.

For the past decade, McKeown, the hospital’s pastoral care chaplain, has wanted to open a labyrinth for patient, staff, visitor and community use. The spiral-like pathways encourage contemplative walking and inner peace, and McKeown hoped the tool could ease the sometimes-stressful hospital environment. This May, the hospital gave her use of the old gift shop,

If you think you couldn’t possibly have a vocation to consecrated life, if you think you absolutely don’t fit the model, (judging of course, by your love of the guys, your lack of really serious prayer, and whatever else doesn’t fit your vision of “the holy sister”), I would like to inform you that God will not be put in a box. A case in point is my own story of God’s ways.

Coming from a family with eight children we would sit around the dining room table and dream of what we’d be when we grew up,